A few years ago, she would have been considered a "juvenile delinquent" and the horror visited upon her called a "victimless crime."
On Friday, she was celebrated as a role model by the very people who once would have helped herd her into jail —...

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has rejected an effort by well-known director Roman Polanski to have all sexual assault charges against him dismissed in a three-decade-old case that spurred him to flee to Europe to avoid sentencing.
Last week,...

Roman Polanski boarded a red-eye out of the country in January 1978, just months after he had agreed to a plea deal to end a Los Angeles County case in which he was accused of raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl.
His departure sparked a debate that...

It took state investigators more than five years to build a criminal case against Richard Alarcon.
To prove Alarcon lied about living outside the Los Angeles City Council district he was elected to represent, they conducted surveillance, questioned...

Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris, California's top law enforcement officer, had little to say in July when an Orange County federal judge declared the state's death penalty system unconstitutional.
Several weeks later, Harris announced that she would challenge the decision, but her reasoning was curious: The ruling, she said, "undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants."
That she delayed making her views known — and then used a liberal justification to explain a response...

Los Angeles County supervisors violated the state’s open-meeting law earlier this year by discussing compensation negotiations behind closed doors without properly informing the public, according to the district attorney’s office.
The D.A. investigation followed a July meeting where Supervisor Gloria Molina said she thought it was inappropriate that the board had discussed in closed session an increase of taxpayer contributions to a top art official’s compensation package.
Deputy...

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, who is expected to sweep to reelection next month, is launching two television ads Wednesday that highlight her tenure as the state’s top law enforcement officer and her efforts to combat school truancy.
“As attorney general, she aggressively prosecuted predators who victimize the vulnerable. Harris cracked down on sex trafficking of women and children into California, took on the transnational gangs, prosecuted sexual assaults and enforced laws requiring...

The messages in Chinese kept flashing across Haowang Wang's phone: Another USC Chinese student had been killed.
Shui? Shui? the messages repeated. Who is it?
Wang froze briefly, then began making calls he thought he'd never have to make again — to friends, classmates, a funeral home.
Two years ago, he and others helped guide Chinese students as they grappled with the murder of two USC graduate students. They tried as best they could to navigate the foreign world beyond the cocoon of the...

One of the former council members blamed for the corruption that left one of Los Angeles County's poorest cities headed toward bankruptcy was sentenced Friday to a year in the county jail, but he could be a free man in just weeks.
George Mirabal is the first of the five former Bell council members to be sentenced for their role in a scandal that overtook the small city and made it a national symbol for municipal greed.
"I feel so badly for the people of Bell that they were deprived of seeing Mr....

Former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has been selected to help shape the county's new effort to improve child welfare services.
Cooley joins a team of eight others chosen by the Board of Supervisors to define the duties and powers for a newly-approved child welfare czar.
“With his vast experience as a prosecutor, Steve brings leadership and good judgment and his legal background will be a positive asset in addressing the role of the courts in the child welfare system,”...